Company's Comin'!

Threads have been flying as I'm making a mad dash to finish up a few sewn items for the house, and knock-out the last bits of sewing before disassembling my sewing room. The reason it has to be disassembled? Company's coming. My sewing room will become the second guest bedroom.

First up, the guest bath shower curtain is finished. It was a quick patchwork project, which, if I'd had more time, I would have appliqued instead of cheating by using palmetto frond print fabric. The curtain is lined with muslin, pre-washed, and finished with a dozen buttonholes to hook onto the double-sided hooks on the shower rod.

My design is a knock-off of this one. Though fabrics (Kona snow and caramel) came from my stash, I'm sure mine cost as much as the ready-made version!

As far as the sewing goes on the hexagon runner... it went. The hexies went together by machine surprisingly well. Quilting also was easy. I just machine quilted a quarter inch on the inside of each separate hexagon. But the binding? Ack! After tediously sewing it to the edges by machine, and then trying to hand-sew it down on the back, I realized what a poor job of folding and turning I'd done. I took it all off!

And here it is with the backing and batting trimmed to the edge of the top, and then just straight-stitched along the edge! How pitiful is that?!

 It doesn't look bad from a distance, but it certainly isn't the finish I was going for!

I thought to satin-stitch or blanket-stitch the edges, but they just rolled up. Not sure what I'm going to do, but this has to be good enough for now.

A somewhat prouder moment was finished my last two Blogger's BOM blocks. These are month #13 designed by Sarah Fielke.

I now have 26 of these eight-inch blocks. How will I put them together?!

Has anyone else noticed, or is it just here at the local JoAnn Fabrics, that Denyse Schmidt fabrics - DS Collection - are in the 50 percent off section? I was stunned, but happy to pick up these for only $6 a yard. The "figure eight" green piece is a restock to my stash. 

Oh! I must tell you! Eleven of us quilters are officially organizing a new chapter of The Modern Quilt Guild! I'm so very excited! Our new chapter is even listed on the MQG website! We're the Central Florida Modern Quilt Guild and you can go to our new blog where I've written our first post. If you're in the area, do come to our November 15 meeting.

Now that I'm caught up with sewing, and family is coming tonight (!) for their first visit, it's time to disassemble my sewing room. To make room for a double air mattress, the tables will be taken down and folded up. The room can go from this...

... to this, for the grandchildren. Pretty much everything (except for the white trestle legs which are in the garage) is behind the two hollow core doors leaning against the wall on the left.

It sure keeps a quilter on her toes, organization-wise, to be able to do this! Linda